Guns & (shhh!) race

Over the last three decades, more than 44,000 African American children have been killed by guns.

And that number, says the Children’s Defense Fund, is nearly 13 times greater than the number of people killed in lynchings from 1882 to 1968.

Speaking of slaps in the face, brace youself for these stinging words of outrage:

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It took the recent shootings of 20 first graders and six adults in a predominately white Connecticut grade school to engage President Obama’s attention — after 443 shooting deaths (mostly blacks) in his hometown of Chicago last year failed to do so.

An intemperate comment, you might say. But not an entirely gratuitous one, you might concede.

The comment and statistic cited above did not come from an NRA 2d Amendment zealot. Or a far-right Obama basher. They came from commentator Juan Williams — liberal, black and a proponent of stricter gun laws.

There can be no serious discussion of firearms violence while avoiding — as politicians are now doing and for too long have been doing — the accompanying component of race, Williams wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal piece.

That race has been left out is “an astonishing omission,” he says, especially considering that:

— Murder by gun is the No. 1 cause of death of African Americans between the ages of 15 and 34.

— Justice Department data for 1980-2008 indicate that blacks are six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely to commit homicides, typically via guns in both instances.

Williams’ conjecture is that acknowledging the race component would lead to a discomforting discussion of “family breakdown issues” — in particular, the “heart-breaking” 72 percent, out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans which all too often leaves young blacks to the temptation of “seeking social status and power in guns.”

Nor is this Williams’ last, caustic, controversial word on the topic. Back in 2008 when Obama did venture to speak out on the verboten subject, Rev. Jesse Jackson all but told him to shut his mouth, scolding him for “talking down to black people,” Williams noted.

“The moment revealed the high cost of speaking honestly about social breakdown in black America,” he said.

“But doing so,” he added, “may be more important to stopping the slaughter in black communities than any new gun-control laws.”

He’s right. But preaching to the already-converted choir — the Wall Street Journal’s largely white, Republican readership — seems not the most promising way of getting a constructive discussion going.

A discussion IS essential, ideally. But not one that only arouses defensive instincts, that only encourages folks to rally around their racial flag.

Any “discussion” that insists on ignoring inglorious history and shameful sociology and economics will be counterproductive. As will any “discussions” on Limbaugh and Hannity that pose smug, preachy pieties as easy solutions.

These really are no different at all from the smug, preachy pieties and easy solutions of liberals who insist the NRA lobby and lack of anti-gun measures are the main sources of firearms violence in America.